[fcarraldo]

100%. A lot of these AI anxiety driven odes to the loss of craft have me wondering whether anyone cares about the value being provided to the user (or the business), which is the part that is actually your job.

Elegant, well-written and technically sound projects will continue to exist, but I’ve seen too many “well crafted” implementations of such technically vexing features as “fetching data and returning it” that were so overengineered that it should have been considered theft of company money.

[restalis]

"I’ve seen too many «well crafted» implementations of such technically vexing features as «fetching data and returning it» that were so overengineered that it should have been considered theft of company money."

This judgement has merit. However, over the years I got to perceive that over-engineering tendency to be the manifestation of exploratory spirit in one's craft. This is how the Unix got to be created at Bell Labs. To their managers, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie worked on programs like the "ed" editor, thus they cared about "value being provided to the user (or the business)". What was later officially named Unix was not pitched as an operating system, but instead framed mostly just a needed way to organize the growing set of utilities, among other things (i.e. as a footnote). What are the over-engineered bits (and the related gained experience) in a given project may become useful for something else. People (tend to) do this kind of stuff. But should they be blamed, considering the enticing promise of growth and development of new technologies, practiced by employers themselves, as part of recruitment game?

[jimbokun]

Bell Labs employees were explicitly hired to do research.